Top Notch vs. Interchange

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MODERN MANAGEMENT & FORESIGHT JOURNAL HOMEPAGE: IJMMF.COM, ISSN: 2204-0072. VOL.2. ISSUE 1, PUBLISHED ONLINE on June 2015, pp 59-64.

THE EFFICIENCY OF INTERCHANGE VS. TOP NOTCH ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS IN THE EFL CONTEXT OF IRAN GHASEM TAYYEBI* & NEGIN KARAMI *Corresponding Author English Department, Kazerun Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kazerun, Iran

ABSTRACT This study attempted at finding which of the Top-Notch and Interchange series are more efficient in Iranian EFL teachers’ point of view. To this end, Alamri’s (2008) questionnaire with the following categories was employed: general appearance, design and illustrations, accompanying materials, objectives, topic/language/social and cultural contents, language skills, teachability, flexibility, teaching methods, practices and finally the way of testing. 75 EFL teachers teaching at Gachsaran, Kazerun and Borazjan English language institutes answered the above-mentioned 64-question checklist. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS.16) was used to analyze the data. In general, the results indicated that Top-Notch series were totally more efficient in teachers’ point of view. However, in design and illustration, topic contents, social and cultural contexts, teachability and flexibility the two series were not statistically different from each other. KEYWORDS: Textbook Evaluation, Top-Notch, Interchange, EFL Context

1. INTRODUCTION According to Richards (2001), one of the key elements in most language contexts which form the basis of language input are textbooks. They serve the learners with language practices, the lessons content, the balanced skills that are tough and different kinds of practices the students taken part in. they also may supplement the teacher’s instruction. Apart from teachers’ talk they may function as the source of contact with the target language, they may function as presenter of new ideas on how to plan and teach the lessons for inexperienced teachers. Most of English language courses cannot be held without these commercial textbooks. Apart from these beneficial uses they have some disadvantages that Richards (2001) list them in his paper. Considering the above mentioned issues and with taking into considerations both benefits and limitations of textbooks, experts must evaluate these books and decide on some remedial plans like supplementary materials and books or so, or change the books if the ratio of limitations is more than the benefits that learners can gain by studding them. The importance of book evaluation is underscored here, but this job must be done carefully with taking the textbooks’ role, the teachers’ (their experience, etc.) and the learners’ in the learning program into consideration. There are some criteria for textbook evaluation like keeping an eye on the learners’ needs, supporter or pedagogic roles etc. All of these above mentioned points in Richards’ paper demonstrate the importance of book evaluation and reveal the objective steps that must be taken to do this difficult and sensitive job effectively. Objectives This study aimed at finding out the advantages and disadvantages that the Interchange Series (developed by Richards) and Top Notch Series ( developed by Saslow and Ascher) regarding their general appearance, design

TAYYEBI & KARAMI (2015)

VOL2, NO.1, PP. 59-64

and illustrations, accompanying materials, objectives, topic/language/social and cultural contents, language skills, teachability, flexibility, teaching methods, practices and finally the way of testing their materials ,and also suitability of one of these two series in EFL context of Iran in comparison to its counterpart. In line with these objectives, the fallowing null hypotheses was formulated: There is no difference between Top-Notch and Interchange series in terms of the categories mentioned in Alamri’s (2008) checklist and their efficacy in EFL context of Iran. Significance Textbook evaluation is very important in EFL contexts because the textbooks used in such situations are designed mostly by native speakers or at least by the writers who are not familiar with some circumstances the users of these books are in, for instance, cultural and religious (morals and mentality) circumstances, educational system, the learners’ objectives of attending English classes and their needs (because these books consider some general needs and focus on some general notions, functions, structures, etc. of language). So, this paper intended to reveal which series were more satisfying from the viewpoint of Iranian EFL teachers who have the experience of teaching them.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW There are fairly many studies on the issue that this paper is going to scrutinize. Davidson (1975) says that besides the teacher, the textbook is the most important factor in the foreign language classrooms. Few teachers enter the class without a textbook which provides content and teaching/learning activities that determine most of the events in the classroom. Some students in Mukundan and Ahour’s (2010) words depend on the textbook as “an essential component of their learning material without which they do not consider the learning situation to be serious”. Textbooks, according to Tomlinson (2010), prepare learners for examination, help teachers by reducing their preparation time, help administrators to devote lessons to teachers, standardize teaching and provide teaching that would be that would be useful to any learner at any language level. Tomlinson (2011) also believes that a textbook helps provide a lesson plan for both teachers and learners, making it possible for them to look forward to what will be done in a lesson. They are seen as sources of achieving learners’ needs and matching the aims and their needs. Ahour and Ahmadi (2012) claimed that “textbooks are the main sources that convey the knowledge and information to the learners in an easy and organized way”. Evaluating textbooks have many reasons. Hutchinson and Waters (1993) shows that materials evaluation should be perform to determine the adequacy of the materials to our “particular purpose”. In other words, Hutchinson (1987) says that material evaluation help the teachers in choosing teaching materials and the development of their knowledge regarding the nature of language and learning. According to Sheldon (1988), there are so many reasons for evaluating textbooks. It can help the teachers to have a good knowledge of the content of the textbooks and to identify the advantages and disadvantages of the textbooks that are being used in advance. For Sheldon all the textbooks in ELT should have noticeable features and qualifications, effectiveness and suitability for people who use them. Otherwise, Cunningworth (1995) mentions two reasons for textbook evaluation including accepting new course books and finding out the specific strength and weaknesses in course books in use. In this case, there are some advantages of materials evaluation to be to be mentioned. Littlejohn (2011), for example, claims that “materials analysis and evaluation enable us to look inside the materials and to take more control over their design and use”. McDonough and Shaw (2003) declare that evaluation is “a useful process in its own right” because it gives teachers ideas about the organizational principles of the materials and helps them to get along with developments in the field. This will help teachers to change the materials according to real situations. Many empirical studies have been done on the textbook evaluation in different contexts. Different researchers have used different textbook evaluation checklist to evaluate different textbooks or materials. In the Iranian context, Ansary (2004) investigated the merits and demerits of Iranian High School English textbooks. He concluded that the shapes of these books are not designed in a way that makes them attractive and usable. There is little use of pictures and illustrations to make them attractive enough for the students. Even when some illustrations are given, they are not clear enough for the students to completely understand what they should do. Page | 60

TAYYEBI & KARAMI (2015)

VOL2, NO.1, PP. 59-64

Ansary also found that the reading parts of these books have not been organized according to their level of difficulty and that background knowledge of the learners has not been considered. Considering teaching methodology, Hosseini (2007) evaluated ELT materials in Iran High schools. He concluded that the main focus of English education, especially at the pre-university and senior high school levels, is on reading skills and the textbooks lack listening and speaking activities. Therefore, the Grammar Translation teaching as the prominent method is used by the teacher at these levels. According to Hosseini (2007), even the less consideration is on writing because writing activities change into grammatical exercises including making passive sentences or unscrambling the disordered words and phrases. In another study, Ghaderi and Soleimani (2013) examined Interchange and American English File. Thirty Iranian English teachers helped the collection of data via answering a changed version of Litz’s (2005) questionnaire. They used descriptive statistics to analyze the data and concluded that both series were satisfactory in teachers point of view since both have high mean (more than the median= 5.5). Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) showed that the difference between the means was not significant in features like practical considerations, layout and design, activities and skills. For language type and subject and content the difference was significant (P≤0.05). The findings of their study revealed that both series were satisfactory, but about the last tree features teachers were more satisfied with American English File. Moreover, Azizifar and Baghelani (2014) used Thein’s (2006) questionnaire to evaluate Top Notch Series. There were 25male and female subjects (English teachers from western part of Iran, Ilam) who answered the questionnaires. The findings of their study revealed that the series were well-developed according to students’ needs and satisfied the teachers’ expectations regarding the aspects like general appearance, design and illustration, objectives and the practices and testing, but were not satisfactory regarding critical topics and writing materials aspects. Moreover, Riazati and Zare (2010) weighted New Interchange Series with educational values and the books’ suitability in view. Thirty-five male and female Iranian English teachers participated in data collection through answering Litz’s questionnaire (2000). The research indicated some strong points like practical considerations of the series (its reasonable price, accessibility and existence of teachers’ guide and audio tapes), their layout and design, communicative practices and a balance of activities and four skills and weak points like lack of supplementary teaching material, cultural disconformities of some the content, high level of linguistic difficulties regarding students capacity, extra number of testing exercises etc. In another study, Rezaee, Kouhpaeenejad and Mohammadi (2012) evaluated Interchange and Top-Notch books (respectively 3rd and 2nd editions) using Litz‘s (2000) questionnaire. There were 42 EFL learners with different proficiency level in their study. The results of their study showed that Top-Notch books were expensive and not easy to find. Finally, Moradi (2013) evaluated High School English books (1, 2, and 3) and New Interchange books (1, 2, and 3) regarding speech acts (via Searle’s (1976) model) and functions. The number of speech acts in New Interchange books vs. high school books was 1100 vs. 275. The number of language functions in the former books was much more than the latter one in which they lacked a distinct pattern. The study revealed that since High School English books were not designed communicatively, they could not build/improve learners’ pragmatic competence. So it suggested some changes to these books’ designers considering speech acts in English books taught in Iran’s high schools.

3. METHODOLOGY Participant 75 male and female EFL teachers from different English language institutes of Gachsaran, Kazerun and Borazjan participated in this study. They were in their 20s to 60s. They were all Persian with different ethnicity, culture as well as educational background. As it was beyond the scope of this study, their level of proficiency was not taken into account.

Page | 61

TAYYEBI & KARAMI (2015)

VOL2, NO.1, PP. 59-64

Instrument The researcher used a modified and validated version of the questionnaire developed by Alamri (2008). Based on the comments of EFL experts, some minor modifications were applied. To measure the internal consistency, Cronbach’s Alpha was employed (r= 0.83). The checklist had twelve categories containing questions about the general appearance of the textbooks, their design and illustrations, accompanying materials, objectives, topic/ language/ social and cultural contents, language skills, teachability, flexibility, teaching methods, practice and testing. Totally it had 64 subcategories and a Likert scale of 5 numerical codes (1. Strongly disagree, 2. Disagree, 3. Not decided 4. Agree, 5. Strongly agree). Two separate questionnaires of the same categories (12 categories) and subcategories (64 subcategories) were used to evaluate each book. Procedure This research was conducted in February and May. The researcher sent the questionnaires to the subjects via email and WhatsApp software, met them in person or had someone else to give them to the subjects. The questionnaires were distributed among 150 EFL teachers; some were reluctant to cooperate or to take part in the study. At the end of the process of data collection, 75 were collected.

4. RESULTS & DATA ANALYSIS The researchers ran an independent samples t-test to compare the general perception about each series (TopNotch and Interchange) first. Based on the data given in the following table, the researchers concluded that totally the difference between Top-Notch (M=17.6, SD= 1.07) and Interchange (M=13.41, SD=1.53) was statistically significant [t (7.387) = 0.000]. As a result, the null hypothesis of the study, i.e., there is no difference between Top-Notch and Interchange series in terms of the categories mentioned in Alamri’s (2008) checklist and their efficacy in EFL context of Iran can safely be rejected. Table1. Total statistical evaluation of two series in comparison to each other Top-Notch Interchange t df 17.6 13.41 (1.07) (1.53) Note: *P≤.05, SD appear in parentheses below the means Total evaluation

7.387

73

Sig .000*

Then, to the number of categories, independent samples t-tests were run. The results are reported in the following tables. On the whole, in the following categories, statistically significant differences were observed in favor of Top Notch Series: general appearance, objectives, language contents, language skills, teaching methods, Accompanying materials as well as Practice and testing. In other categories, the differences were not significant. The results are reported in the following table. On the whole, it can be claimed that Iranian EFL teachers had a far better perception about Top Notch Series in the categories under investigation. Table2. Statistical evaluation of two series regarding different categories presented in the questionnaire Top-Notch Interchange t df Sig 23 16.80 1.323 73 .000* General appearance (13.19) (2.25) 21.40 18.20 1.897 73 .084 Design and (1.95) (5.18) illustration 13 11 3.111 73 .043* Accompanying (2.21) (1.88) materials 33.20 24 0. 111 73 .000* Objectives (3.73) (3.46) Page | 62

TAYYEBI & KARAMI (2015)

12.40 11.60 (.51) (1.57) 22 9.60 Language contents (5.69) (1.42) 12 10.80 Social and cultural (1.49) (2.14) contexts 20.60 14 Language skills (1.71) (2.30) 7.60 8 Teachability (1.07) (1.76) 11 11.45 Flexibility (.66) (1.42) 12.60 7.60 Teaching Methods (.84) (.516) 22.40 19.20 Practice and testing (1.83) (3.22) 211.2 116 Total (12.85) (18.37) *P≤.05, SD appear in parentheses below the means Topic contents

VOL2, NO.1, PP. 59-64

2.198

73

.145

-1.321

73

.000*

6.231

73

.164

1. 221

73

.000*

-1. 333

73

.548

2. 458

73

.433

-2. 141

73

.000*

2.432

73

.014*

3.222

73

.000*

5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION Despite the limitations that every commercial textbook like Top-Notch and Interchange might have, based on the findings of the current study and in line with the findings of Azizifar and Baghelani’s (2014) study, it can be claimed that Top-Notch series are more satisfying from the viewpoint of Iranian EFL teachers. Although these series cannot be looked as a perfect model, they might be a better substitute of Interchange books. Riazati and Zare (2010) listed some weak points of the Interchange series, to add some others it can be said that these series should be revised regarding general appearance, accompanying materials, objectives, language content and skills, teaching method and practice and testing. The teachers should be aware of the shortcomings of the books they teach (no matter what it is) and try to compensate for them with appropriate supplementary materials, or if the communication doors between them and the author are open (usually it is) they can suggest improvement points for their ease at work and their students sake. Each individual teacher can be an evaluator of the book that (s)he is/was teaching because as Davidson (1975) argues besides the teacher, the textbook is the most important factor in the foreign language classrooms that includes content and teaching/learning activities and determines classroom events. Taking into account the limitations that every researcher might face when conducting a research such as sampling model, limited number of lack of control over all variables that might interfere and so on, the research gates are open to a more detailed research in this field to find out whether the result remains the same. If yes, what should be done to improve the quality of English textbooks that are available in Iran or with which materials these books must be substituted?

REFERENCES Alamri, A. M. (2008). An evaluation of the sixth grade English language. Retrieved from http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/amri/Documents/MA%20thesis.pdf on 6 March 2014. Ansary, T. (2004). An Analytic Look at High School English Textbooks and Introducing a Sample Lesson Based on Communicative Syllabus Design. (Unpublished master’s thesis, Islamic Azad University-Tabriz Branch, Iran). Azizifar, A. & Baghelani, E. (2014). Textbook Evaluation from EFL Teachers’ Perspectives: The Case of “TopNotch” Series. International SAMANM Journal of Business and Social Sciences. Vol. 2 Page | 63

TAYYEBI & KARAMI (2015)

VOL2, NO.1, PP. 59-64

Cunningworth, A.(1995). Choosing Your Course book. Oxford: Heinemann Publishers Ltd Davison, W.(1975). Factors in Evaluating and Selecting Texts for the Language Classroom. ELT Journal, Vol.30, No.4, 310 314. Hosseini, S.M.H. (2007). ELT in Higher Education in Iran and India: A Critical View. Language in India, 7, 111. Hutchinson, T. & Waters, A. (1993). English for Specific Purposes: A learning-centered Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hutchinson, T. (1987). What’s underneath? An interactive view of materials evaluation. In L. E. Sheldon (Ed.). Littlejohn, A.(2011). The Analysis of Language Teaching Materials: Inside the Trojan Horse. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Materials Development in Language Teaching, pp. 179 - 211 Litz, D.R.A. (2005). Textbook Evaluation and ELT Management: A South Korean Case Study. Asian EFL Journal. Retrieved November 12.2012 McDonough, J. & Shaw, C. (2003). Materials and Methods in ELT: a teacher’s guide (2nd Ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Moradi, A. & Karbalaei, A. & Afraz, SH. (2013). A Textbook Evaluation of Speech Acts and Language Functions in High School English Textbooks (I, II and III) and Interchange Series, Books I, II, and III. Journal of Natural and Social Sciences.Vol2, Issue on Teaching and Learning. Mukundan, J., & Ahour, T. (2010). A review of textbook evaluation checklists across four decades (1970 – 2008). Rezaee, A. A. & Kouhpaeenejad, M. H. & Mohammadi, A. (2012). Iranian EFL learners’ perspective on New Interchange series and Top-Notch series. Elsevier. Riazati, M. J., & Zare, P. (2010).Textbook Evaluation: EFL Teachers’ Perspectives on “New Interchange”. Vol. 1,ISSUE: Studies In Literature And Language, pp. 54-60. Richards, J. C .(2011).Tactics for listening. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sheldon, L. E. (1988). Evaluating ELT Textbooks and Materials. ELT Journal, 42, 237- 246 Soleimani, H. & Ghaderi, E. (2013).What Do Language Teachers Think about Interchange and American English File? Teacher’s Evaluation of Two ESL Textbooks in Iran. Australia: Australian International Academic center. Vol2, No5 Tok, H. (2010). TEFL Textbook Evaluation: From Teachers’ Perspective. Educational Research and Review, 5(9)508- 517. Tomlinson, B. (2010). Principles of Effective Materials Development. In N. Harwood(Ed.), English Language Teaching Materials: Theory and Practice(pp.81-98). Cambridge: Cambridge University press Tomlinson, B. (2011). Glossary of basic terms for material development in language teaching and introduction.

Page | 64